


Seasons of Joy

by ama



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Canon Jewish Character, Dancing, Family Fluff, Fasting, Gen, Hanukkah, Jewish Holidays, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-05 07:16:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5366177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ama/pseuds/ama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Lehnsherr/Maximoff/Dane family celebrate the cycle of the Jewish year. There will be one drabble for each night of Chanukah! Based on a tumblr prompt for Lorna Dane + holidays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rosh Hashanah

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I had to majorly fudge the details of the characters’ lives, given the fact that there’s no convenient movie telling us how the L/M/D family come together. Suffice to say that Erik was present to some degree in all of his children’s lives, and their relationship is consistently decent. I have Erik as living at the school more or less full time (his relationship with Charles is heavily implied but not central to this fic), with occasional travelling for the cause of mutant rights; his past has included some of your average terrorism, but not to the murderous extent given in the movies, and he’s getting up in age by the time this is set so he’s nearly retired.
> 
> Likewise, Wanda and Pietro have a Complicated past, but Wanda is settled down in NYC with her boys, and Pietro has some kind of career that involves traveling around the world (don’t ask me what it is), and Lorna, after some time spent doing the superhero thing, is working as an engineer in San Francisco.
> 
> So yeah. I think that’s all you need to know. Brief info on each holiday will be at the end of each chapter for those who are unfamiliar. Thanks to salerta on tumblr for the prompt!

“That one, Zaide!” Billy cried, flinging his arm towards the top of the tree, and Erik sighed.

He really shouldn’t be surprised. He had been wandering around the apple orchard with his grandsons for a good forty minutes now, and without fail, Billy was only interested in the apples that were far, far beyond his reach. Which would not necessarily be a problem, except it meant that Erik was continuously setting down the bag of apples and picking up Billy and levitating to the top of the tree and leaving Tommy on the ground, temporarily unsupervised and inevitably about to make a break for the distant horizon. It was probably not good for Erik’s back, or his blood pressure for that matter—not that he was old enough to worry about such things, of course, despite what his grey hair might make one think.

“All right. _Stay put_ , Tommy.”

“I promise,” the four-year-old said innocently, evil glinting in his eye.

“Sure you do,” Erik muttered.

He hefted Billy in his arms and lifted the two of them into the air. Billy squealed with earnest delight for about the thirteenth time that day—and, for the thirteenth time that day, Erik couldn’t help but smile and press a kiss to the top of his head. Billy surveyed the branches before them with great seriousness, and reached out to select the largest apple he could find, almost completely red with a faint green blush on one side. He held it out proudly for Erik’s inspection.

“That’s a good one. Who is it for? Mama? Uncle Pietro?”

Billy thought for a moment, his little brow furrowed, and then smiled slyly. He tapped his chin again, the picture of contemplation, and then announced “Zaide!”

Erik accepted the gift as gravely as it was offered.

“Thank you very much, schatz. You know, it’s such a nice-looking apple, and I’m so very hungry, maybe I’ll just take a bite right now—”

“No!” Billy cried, reaching out to snatch it back. “You have to wait! For the honey!”

“Ah, of course, the honey. I forgot.”

At that moment he heard a burst of indistinguishable speech in Tommy’s voice, and he looked down, half-surprised that the boy hadn’t run off yet. Through the branches of the tree he spotting sunlight glinting off green hair, and he understood. With a smile, he lowered himself and Billy to the ground.

“Lorna! Good to see you darling—shana tovah,” he said, kissing her cheek. “What are you doing here?”

“Where else would I be but with my father and my favorite nephews?” she smiled, deftly liberating Billy from Erik’s grasp. “I haven’t seen you two in so long. You’ve gotten so big!”

“Auntie, Auntie, I’m the tallest kid in preschool, _and_ the fastest, except for Sarah Lamego but she can only beat me by a little bit,” Tommy bragged.

Lorna smiled at him and kissed Billy on the cheek, and for several minutes she was the focus of the boys’ babbling as the four of them strolled through the wide paths of the orchard. After a while, though, Billy began to wiggle in her grasp, and she set him down. The twins began to stray, chasing each other under and around the apple trees while giggling wildly. Lorna watched them, her eyes soft, and slipped her arm around Erik’s elbow.

“I stayed for Shacharit and part of Musaf,” she said, belatedly answering his earlier question. “But after a while it felt—a bit stuffy. It’s such a beautiful day, and after evening services last night I didn’t feel like I needed more prayer.” She closed her eyes and lifted her head to the autumn sun and the wind, a smile still playing on her lips. “It feels like the new year, doesn’t it?” she said, exhaling contentedly. “A shanah _tovah_.”

Erik opened his mouth to make some vaguely agreeable answer and then found himself pausing, surprised at the curious tightness in his lungs—not a constriction but an expansion. The polite answer, suddenly, no longer seemed like enough. It _was_ a beautiful day. He, personally, did not observe Rosh Hashanah by spending the requisite hours in the synagogue, but he was still a Jew and he still felt the rightness of the year beginning here, at the end of the fading summer, with harvest and plenty in the air, rather than in the middle of winter.

And even if he found that the words of Hebrew prayer sit awkwardly on his tongue, it gave him satisfaction to think of his children praying in unison with all the others who had attended services that morning. It gave them a sense of their history. With few family members and few stories, they needed some kind of history. Erik had been the one who insisted that they all be properly converted, and given them Hebrew names, and sent them to Hebrew school, and helped them prepare for their b’nai mitzvahs. The fact that they were all still observant was a pleasant confirmation of the fact that they weren’t as bitter as they had been when they were thirteen. No matter what his faults as a father, he had done _something_ right.

Besides all that, he would never have imagined, fifty years ago, that he might be able to stroll through an apple orchard with his grandsons and his daughter on a sunny fall day. For the first time in a while, he quietly thanked God.

“Yes,” he mused. “Yes, a very good year indeed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rosh Hashanah: the Jewish New Year. Typically celebrated with synagogue services and eating apples with honey to symbolize a sweet year. The greeting is “shanah tovah” (a good year) or “shanah tovah u’metukah” (a good and sweet year).  
> Zaide: Yiddish for grandfather  
> 


	2. Yom Kippur

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to mention: the title is borrowed from the book “Seasons of Our Joy,” by Arthur Waskow, which is an excellent guide to the Jewish holidays if anyone wants to learn more (it has recipes!).

Lorna woke on the morning of Yom Kippur with a dry throat. She thought longingly of taking a drink of water, swallowed a few times, and forced herself to get dressed without further delay. The worst part of the fast, she always found, was the first few hours of the morning, when her body craved a sip of water, a bagel, and coffee. Best to keep it firmly in hand until they reached the synagogue and got into the swing of the prayers and the energy of the crowd, which were usually a sufficient distraction.

She put on a white dress and stood before the mirror for a few minutes, running her hand through her hair and watching the green strands pouring softly over the white fabric of her shoulder. When she was a child, she had received many odd, if not hostile, looks from the more traditional members of the Conservative shul nearby. In fact, she often claimed to have single-handedly broken down the last objections to women wear yarmulkes in that particular synagogue, because by the fourth time she visited, the rabbi was actually _asking_ her to cover her head—preferably using the large Bukharian-style kippah, rather than the tiny black Ashkenazi style that her father wore.

By the time she had become a bat mitzvah, though, a new rabbi had joined the synagogue, a younger man who, upon seeing her, had smiled delightedly and immediately declared “Blessed is the Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who makes the creatures of the earth distinctive!”

Lorna smiled to herself and pinned a small triangle of white lace to her head—a far cry from the Bukharian kippah—and went downstairs. There were two kitchens in the mansion. One, much larger, was currently brimming over with the smells of frying bacon and baking muffins. The other was smaller, private, and that was the one where Lorna went to find her family. They were all there, dressed in white. She said her good mornings and sat at the table, trying to ignore the rumbling of her stomach.

“Mama, I want Fruit Loops,” Tommy whined as Billy stared morosely at the bowl of plain cheerios and banana slices in front of him. Wanda smoothed Tommy’s hair and dropped a kiss to his forehead.

“Not today, hun. Remember we talked about this? On Yom Kippur, we don’t eat sweets. Look, see, Zaide isn’t having Fruit Loops either.”

Lorna had never in her life seen her father eat Fruit Loops; still, at Wanda’s words he looked up from his toast and nodded solemnly. Erik, unlike his children, never fasted on Yom Kippur. As a child Lorna had never understood why, and one year she had pestered him about it. Erik had evaded the question, but she received an answer, unexpectedly, from Charles, who had silently but firmly reminded her that her father had more than enough experience with hunger and did not need to be requainted with the feeling every year.

He fasted instead by eating plain food: dry toast, tea, plain rice, blanched vegetables, water, no meat. Pietro did the same, as he was medically exempt from the fast. The way his metabolism worked, a twenty-five hour fast was at least the equivalent of four days for the rest of them. And the children, of course, were exempt as well. The year Wanda was pregnant, she hadn’t fasted either. (That had been a hard year for Lorna.)

“What time do services start again?” she asked around a yawn.

“Nine-thirty,” Erik answered.

“Oh, are you coming for the beginning?”

“Yes, I thought I would. I almost missed yizkor last year.”

Lorna’s stomach twisted uncomfortably in a way that had nothing to do with hunger. The yizkor memorial service had always filled her with a sense of foreboding; at this synagogue, all those who hadn’t lost a parent were led out of the room for the service, but they could always hear what was going on in the sanctuary. Loud prayers interspersed with unselfconscious sobbing. Lorna could—should, probably—join the mourners and recite yizkor for her mother, but she had never quite managed to work up the courage to do so.

As if all those years of friendship with Charles was starting to wear off on him, Erik looked up at precisely that moment and met Lorna’s gaze. His eyebrows rose in a question, which she avoided answering.

“I’m going to wait outside,” she announced abruptly. “The smell from the other kitchen is getting to me. Fifteen minutes?”

“Five,” Pietro said, waving her away, oblivious to the exasperated look his twin shot him. Lorna smiled faintly—yes, good luck at getting the boys ready that quickly—and hastened to the front of the house and out the front door.

The weather was not quite as perfect as it had been on Rosh Hashanah; the sky was overcast, and the clouds were a mottled grey. A brisk autumn breeze was blowing, and Lorna tilted her face to catch it as she let out a deep breath.

Yom Kippur was the holiest day of the year, and it was important. She knew that. But despite that—or possibly because of it—she could never quite appreciate it the same way she appreciated Rosh Hashanah. It _unsettled_ her. The fasting, and the white clothes, and the long prayers listing the sins that they had committed and would commit. Begging for forgiveness. It made her wonder if those around her were sneaking glances at her family, her very public family for which private sin was an oxymoron. It never seemed to bother the rest of them, what other people thought, but it bothered her.

Had any of the mourners at the yizkor service personally killed their mother, even if only by accident? She didn’t think so. Had any of the congregation who asked forgiveness for the “sins by which they incurred the penalty of death by the hand of Heaven” actually committed such sins, with such zeal as her family had? (There were extenuating circumstances, of course, Lorna always told herself. God was merciful. God knew what her father and her siblings had gone through, and what injustices they were seeking punishment for. On most days, Lorna knew this. On Yom Kippur, she was less sure.)

She shivered and pulled her white sweater tighter. She had forgotten her tallis in San Francisco, which was another source of irritation. Normally, drawing the prayer shawl over her head to recite the blessing was a comfort, but today she would have to go without it. There was nothing to make her feel secure except the tiny bit of lace pinned to her vibrant hair.

“Cold, sis?” Pietro said, and Lorna jumped.

“That was four minutes, if anything.”

“Time is an illusion,” Pietro shrugged.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and rubbed at her arm—at a speed that actually did warm her up. Pietro was not typically one for physical affection, so Lorna gladly leaned against him. Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of her brother’s white hair, and she almost laughed. He was even more appropriately dressed than the rest of them.

Pietro tugged at her hair in retaliation, and Lorna squawked.

“Hey! You can’t do that!”

“It’s the Day of Atonement, I can do whatever I want. All my sins are getting wiped away in like half an hour.”

“You have to actually _atone_ first, asshole!”

“Children,” Erik said dryly as he emerged, holding Tommy’s hand. Wanda followed, still trying to wipe banana off of Billy’s face.

“I want to sit with Auntie,” Tommy declared.

He rushed forward and grabbed Lorna’s hand. She smiled and drew out of Pietro’s grasp, and took his hand in her other one. Her father went off to fetch the car—the mansion was too far from a synagogue to walk, especially with young children—and she stood there for a moment, staring up at the pale sky and squeezing two hands tightly in hers, and felt steady.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yom Kippur: the Day of Atonement. a solemn day marked by synagogue services, fasting, and repentance for one’s sins. The typical greeting is “May you have an easy fast.”
> 
> Also, there's a reference in here to Lorna's original backstory in the comics, in which her powers accidentally cause a plane crash that kills her mother.


	3. Sukkot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sukkot is a bit of an obscure holiday, so I thought I would put the explanation at the beginning of this chapter: Sukkot is the festival of tabernacles. A week-long festival in which people build a sukkah, which is a kind of wooden booth meant to symbolize the temporary structures the ancient Israelites built while wandering in the desert, and eat meals there. Lorna also makes a joke about four plants that Jews shake on Sukkot. There is no one accepted reason, but a popular one is that each plant represents a certain type of Jew; you need all four, and they need to be bound together, to be whole. more explanation here: http://www.aish.com/h/su/wt4s/48970641.html

It was almost impressive, Wanda thought, how dirty children could manage to become on any given day. At least this time there was no mystery to it; Pietro had helped her to build a sukkah in the tiny front lawn of their house on the outskirts of New York City, and the boys had been thrilled to eat outside, and naturally eating outside also meant running and wrestling and falling down for the sheer pleasure of it. All outside. In the mud and grass and dirt. At this point, she was tired of fighting it; she just began to run the bath with a weary sigh. The phone started ringing a few minutes later, and she went to answer it, having given the boys strict instructions to not drown themselves while she was gone.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Wanda, it’s Lorna. Are you busy?”

“Well, I just put the boys in the bath,” Wanda said as she went back down the hall into the bathroom. The twins, shockingly, had obeyed her instructions and were happily playing with their bath toys, both alive and healthy. “But it will take a good five to ten minutes to get any actual cleaning done. I have time to chat. Boys, say hi to Auntie Lorna.”

“Hi auntie!” they chorused.

“Tell them I say hi back,” Lorna said cheerfully.

“Are you all settled in now? How was your flight?”

Lorna had flown off almost immediately after Yom Kippur. After bouncing around for a few years, she had accepted a job at an engineering firm in San Francisco. Wanda couldn’t help but admit that she was a bit disappointed; given that she was quite a bit older than her sister, they hadn’t exactly been close when they were young, and it was only in the last ten or fifteen years that that had changed. It would have been nice to be closer physically. That, combined with the fact that Pietro was always running all over the place, meant that she occasionally felt lonely, even in a city with seven million people.

Of course, that could be solved by a quick drive up to Westchester, home to her father, not-quite-acknowledged second father, and hundreds of surrogate siblings. And it helped, too, that Judaism offered a plethora of holidays that gave Lorna an excuse to jet off to the east coast for a few days. It just so happened that Sukkot was not, this year, one of them.

“Fine, fine. I had to go to a meeting a bit jetlagged, but I was over it by the afternoon and yesterday was nice. How’s your Sukkot going?”

“It’s good so far,” Wanda said, reaching over with one hand to dump a plastic pail of warm water over Tommy’s head. “The boys _love_ eating outside, don’t we? Even when it rains and the ground is all muddy and we could technically stay inside and stay clean,” she said, playfully reproachful.

The boys, unrepentant, giggled conspiratorially, and Wanda shook her head with a fond smile. Over the phone, her sister laughed.

“I completely understand. We have precious few holidays that involve playing in the mud. Best to make the most of them.”

“How about you? Did you build a sukkah?”

“No, my landlord didn’t approve. I have a couple of friends who eat in the sukkah at the local shul with me. Oh, it was funny, yesterday I was walking through the park, and Chabad had gotten permission to build a sukkah there, and they asked my friend Carmen if she was Jewish and wanted to shake the lulav! She said she wasn’t Jewish and I was, and they offered it to me **—** very graciously, of course **—** but I just thought it was so _funny_ , because I always think I look just like Dad, ergo I must look Jewish. But no one ever thinks you look Jewish when you have green hair.”

“A problem I have literally never had,” Wanda commented ruefully. She, personally, thought she looked more like her mother than their father, but most Americans had never met a Roma woman before; they took in the strongly-marked features of her face, her dark curly hair, and the olive ambiguity of her skin, and guessed “Jewish” ninety percent of the time. Unless, of course, they tried to speak to her in Spanish.

“There are four kinds of people in the world: those who are Jews who look it, those who are Jews and don’t, those who aren’t and look it, and those who aren’t and don’t,” Lorna said sagely. “And on Sukkot we take a giant asparagus **—** ”

“That is the most niche joke you’ve ever made and it’s terrible,” Wanda groaned.

At that moment, Billy decided to joyously slap the surface of the water with both hands, and Wanda recoiled and almost fell off **—** or into **—** the tub.

“Sweetie, no splashing! Okay, Lorna, I’ve got to go, we need to start shampooing before they flood the place.”

“Yeah, I understand. All right, tell everyone I send my love.”

“Will do. You’re coming for Chanukah, right?”

“Yes, luckily it falls so close to Christmas this year. I’ll be able to take off a bit early and be there for the third or fourth night.”

“Good!”

“And keep an eye on the mail, I sent the boys some bags of candy for Simchat Torah.”

Wanda glanced at her sons anxiously, but luckily they hadn’t heard the magic word.

“That’s sweet of you,” she said to her sister. “No pun intended.”

“To be honest, Sukkot is _not_ a fun holiday, mud or no. Sooner or later they’re going to realize that. The good part is Simchat Torah at the end, so I figured I’d better make it worthwhile.”

Wanda laughed.

“All right, all right. I’ll talk to you later. Chag Sameach!”

“Chag Sameach.”


	4. Simchat Torah

“This is going to be some kind of hippie crap, isn’t it?” Pietro asked, tapping his fingers rapid-paced against his thigh as he walked. Lorna rolled her eyes and slipped her arm through his.

“Of course it is, darling, this is SF. But it’s appropriate for Simchat Torah, isn’t it? It’s the closest to Woodstock we’ll ever get.” He had to hum in agreement at that. “That’s why I go Reconstructionist on this holiday. Knitted kippahs and tie-dye shirts and guitars. It sets the atmosphere.”

“You said there are other mutants at this place, too, right?” Pietro asked.

In his various wanderings around the world he had visited a fair number of synagogues **—** out of curiosity as much as devotion **—** and he was always interested to see ones that had visibly mutant members. In his experience, most shuls were fairly decent places. It helped, he supposed, that Judaism had no tradition regarding a freakish-looking devil and a very well developed tradition of honoring the fact that all people were made _b’tselem elohim_ **—** in the image of God. Certain evangelical churches routinely made a spectacle of dragging mutants to the front of the church and dramatically praying for them to be healed, and that kind of thing almost never happened in synagogues. There was no Mi Sheberach for the x gene.

On the other hand, not all synagogues were notably welcoming to those with visible mutations, either. Like all social gatherings dominated by older individuals, gossip ran amok, and the target of such gossip was very often someone’s child or grandchild who **—** did you _see?_ **—** had a tattoo peeking out from their shirtsleeve, or some very unusual hair coloring, or scales. It was, he supposed, human nature. (Even Ben Grimm hadn’t entered a synagogue for _years_ after his transformation, and Pietro was not at all ashamed to admit that, between the two of them, Ben was far more deserving of the title of Nice Jewish Boy Who Should Be Introduced to My Granddaughter At Kiddush.)

“Oh yeah. It’s a fairly new synagogue; this Sephardic couple reached out to some Reconstructionist friends when their daughter grew wings and they thought she’d be more comfortable in a less traditional environment. There are a few other people with visible mutations, and a few with invisible ones.”

“Good.”

“You’ve gotten so protective since Wanda had the twins,” Lorna laughed. “If you don’t watch out, you’re going to start sounding like Dad.”

“Yeah _right_. It’s not being protective, it’s just… If you can’t make it home for every holiday, it’s at least good to know you can be among our own kind.”

Lorna kissed his cheek.

“Family, mutants, and Jews, in that order,” she muttered. “And the rest of the world can go fuck itself. Yeah, you’re _just_ like Dad.”

At that moment, the synagogue appeared in their view, a squat building with a rounded top, set slightly back from the street. Lorna waved at a few of the others converging on the building, and introduced Pietro around. He saw no tie-dye, but knitted kippahs were indeed the fashion, and there was a woman with a guitar and a purple-skinned mutant with a hand drum. He did his best to be nice; it was not his fault that he was incapable of responding people’s “Shalom” greeting without sounding sarcastic, and he definitely did not deserve to have the metal links of his watch pinch at his wrist painfully every time he said it.

Once he settled in, though, he had to admit that it was a fun service. The average age of the congregation members was much lower than he was used to, so there was much more energetic dancing, even for Simchat Torah. It was customary to dance seven circles around the synagogue **—** Pietro earned a bout of laughter by completing all seven laps in about six seconds **—** but even for most humans, the procession was incredibly slow because small groups of people who looked like kibbutzniks would break into the horah, which moved in a little self-contained circle that traveled almost nowhere. The fringes of the Torah covers spun wildly.

At first Lorna hung back slightly, sticking dutifully to her brother’s side, but she was popular, and she kept getting tugged into the dance. She was a good dancer, and Pietro found himself smiling even past the point he normally would have gotten bored. He joined the dancing several times, and enjoyed evoking admiration or protest at the speed of his footwork, but not nearly as much as Lorna, and towards the end of the service she tried to pull him in again.

“Only if you do your dance,” he said.

“I’ve been dancing all night!” she protested.

“You know what I mean.”

Lorna looked puzzled for a moment, and then she grinned delightedly.

“Oh I haven’t done that in _years_! No one here can do it with me.”

“I will,” Pietro said. Lorna’s eyes widened and then she took his hand quickly, as if she were afraid he would change his mind.

Years ago, late one summer, their father had been trying to teach Lorna how to fly **—** and, more importantly, to keep herself stable while she flew, instead of constantly dipping up and down with every change in the wind or her concentration. It was difficult, trying to keep a grip on the magnetic fields, but after a while Lorna found that the easiest way to practice was by dancing. Having set, familiar movements helped her remain steady. So they had danced the horah together, holding hands, their feet tapping on the empty air as they spun in a circle. Pietro and Wanda had watched from the ground, slightly envious **—** not that they would ever, _ever_ tell Lorna that.

Erik and Lorna had demonstrated at the synagogue on Simchat Torah that year to great applause, and over the years other mutants had joined them. First mutants like Storm and Jean who could also fly, then, as Lorna’s control over the fields got better, anyone who could be lifted into the air. Wanda had been the first volunteer.

Pietro, on the other hand, had always hated it **—** he liked to have both feet firmly planted on the ground **—** but he was feeling uncharacteristically nostalgic. He took his sister’s other hand and squeezed tightly as she lifted them into the air. Shouts of delight accompanied them as they slowly, haltingly, began to stretch their legs in the first steps of the folk dance, their skin tingling with magnetic energy. A horah wasn’t really meant to be done with two people and they had to move quickly in their tight circle. As they got used to it they moved faster and faster, spinning around above the heads of their audience and moving higher, closer to the ceiling. Lorna laughed, her green hair swinging behind her, and Pietro grinned.

“Next year, everyone’s coming,” he shouted above the music. “Me, Dad, Wanda and the kids. I’ll bully them into it.”

“Careful, bro,” Lorna called back. “You just promised to do something nice for me. In fact, you’ve already done two nice things this week!”

“Don’t push it,” Pietro said dismissively, with a wink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Simchat Torah: A celebratory holiday that marks the end of the Torah-reading cycle. Involves dancing with the Torah and other joyous observation in the synagogue.  
> Kiddush: this word has a few different meanings, but in this context it means a communal meal served after on the Sabbath at some synagogues (sometimes also called Oneg Shabbat).
> 
> I’m being a teensy bit unfair to Reconstructionists here, but I promise it’s affectionate. Reconstructionism is a Jewish movement that focuses on Judaism as an ethnic and spiritual tradition, which means that many of its participants are of the “spiritual but not religious crowd.” The Reconstructionists I have met tend to be very into joyful, mystical services, and care very deeply about social justice through Judaism. I also use the term “kibbutznik” here, which again does not necessarily mean that someone’s a hippie--a kibbutz, originally, referred to a small, often socialist agricultural community in the British Mandate of Palestine. They predate the establishment of the State of Israel, but many still exist in different forms. Leftist American Jews who are interested in communal living and environmental justice are often drawn to kibbutzim, in theory or in practice.


	5. Chanukah

“Do you ever want to _not_ come home from Chanukah just to prove a point?” Pietro mused. Wanda clucked her tongue at him, and Lorna laughed. She was squeezed into the backseat of the car, between the twins’ car seats, her arms knocking painfully against the hard plastic, and she bent forward and leaned her elbows against the armrest so she could talk to her siblings without waking the kids. They had been soundly asleep since they left the city.

“Come on, Pietro, it’s Dad’s favorite holiday,” Wanda reproached.

“I _know_ that. I didn’t say I would actually skip it intentionally, I just—”

“I know what you mean,” Lorna said. “Sometimes someone tells you ‘Happy Holidays’ and you want to be like ‘thanks but that actually would have meant a lot more in September.’”

“Exactly!” he said, snapping his fingers.

Wanda rolled her eyes, although one side of her mouth—the one on the window side—was quirked into a grin.

“Have you guys ever noticed I’m the only one in this family who isn’t a jerk?”

The sentence was met by a chorus of protest and Pietro began to recount several tales that proved her own deviousness—such as the one time she had become so infuriated at one of Charles and Erik’s argument that she had turned every wall in the mansion to pure glass, and refused to turn them back for a week. Wanda did not dignify that with a response, which Pietro took as proof of her guilt, and which Lorna took as confirmation of her suspicion that her sister actually hadn’t known how to undo the change until after a week of experimentation.

“When you think about it, it’s really funny that Chanukah is Dad’s favorite holiday,” she mused after a moment, tactfully changing the subject. “I mean, it’s just so _typical_ of him, you know?”

“What, that Dad chooses the one holiday involving armed rebellion?” Pietro said.

“Not the only one,” Wanda reminded him. “You’re forgetting Purim.”

“Why is this a trend?”

“That’s exactly what I meant, though. I can just picture him and Charles getting into an argument every year about Santa’s tactics versus the Maccabees!” Lorna said with a chuckle.

“Oh please, Professor X  would be a _terrible_ Santa,” Pietro said, shaking his head.

“True,” Wanda agreed. “The whole naughty-and-nice-list, I mean think about it. If he won’t write Dad down on the naughty list, I don’t think he could for anyone else either. Can you imagine him giving a child coal?”

“People don’t actually _do_ that, do they?”

There was some lively debate as to the matter, but after a while the three of them fell into a companionable silence as the car turned down the long, winding Westchester roads. Eventually the mansion began to swell on the horizon.

As they pulled into the driveway, Wanda slowed down. At first Lorna assumed it was because she didn’t want to hit any wayward children, but then she noticed the way her sister’s eyes were trailing over the front of the house, and she understood. She looked at the house too, her heart softening as her gaze fell on each window and the menorahs sitting patiently beyond the glass. Their father’s family had only had one menorah, when he was a child, but he had learned that other families had one for each member. It only made sense, he said, to make use of the mansion’s many, many windows. So Dad had his own menorah, and so did Pietro, Wanda, and Lorna. They had always set them in different windows, and Lorna had fond memories of running from room to room with her siblings (okay, _with_ Wanda, _after_ Pietro), giggling as they raced through the blessings so that they could light their own candles.

Since then, they had added menorahs for the twins, and various Jewish students at the school had brought their own, as well. The result on the eighth night, when the entire first floor and part of the second were lit up with little flickering candle lights, was breathtaking. Even now, the potential of the candles sitting there waiting to be lit… it was still pretty special.

“It’s a nice holiday,” she said quietly.

“Yes,” Wanda agreed. Pietro gave his carefully nonchalant shrug, not that his sisters bought it.

“Who’s ready for latkes?” he announced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chanukah: the festival of lights. It celebrates the Jewish rebellion against Greek forces in Judea, and the repurification of the defiled Temple. Nine-branched menorahs are lit each night to symbolize the holy oil, and are placed in the window in order to share the light of the miracle with those passing by. Tonight is the fifth night of Chanukah!


	6. Purim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another holiday that people might not be familiar with. Purim is celebratory holiday that honors the Persian Queen Esther/Hadassah and her uncle Mordechai, who prevented the villain Haman from destroying the Jewish community. Jews are commanded to feast, drink, listen to a reading of the Book of Esther, and give to charity. Many communities also put on amateur plays of the Purim story and dress in costume; this is either meant to acknowledge the fact that Esther was forced to hide her Jewishness, or to symbolize that, although G-d is “hidden” in the Book of Esther, His actions guide the players.

Lorna let herself into her apartment with a wave of her hand, only a little unsteady on her feet. She had just come back from a friend’s Purim party, suitably stuffed with hamantaschen and supplied with wine—although she hadn’t drank as much as any of the other guests, who would be crashing on Avi’s floor for the night. Lorna liked having her own space, and disliked the idea of stumbling alone through the streets of San Francisco. She snapped her fingers at the light and collapsed onto her couch with a yawn. Her Cavalier spaniel hopped up beside her and she scratched behind his ears.

“Chag Purim Sameach, Lenny,” she murmured with a smile, and he rested his head on her thigh. She thought about turning in, but despite the tiredness in her body she felt like she _should_ stay up for a little longer. Purim was a happy holiday that actually mandated drunkenness and loud noises. Ten o’clock seemed too early. But Lenny was a lazy dog and did not seem to have any more energy than she did, so really what else was there to do?

Just as she was about to get up, Lorna saw a light blinking on her answer machine. She flopped over the couch and stretched so she could reach the button; Lenny yelped in protest. There was a sound of static for a moment, and a whispered “Now?” followed by “Yes, now,” spoken in a low voice.

“HAPPY PURIM, AUNTIE,” Billy and Tommy screamed, and Lenny jumped at the sound.

Lorna laughed. A little sun kindled in her stomach, and she curled up happily against the couch cushions, squeezing Lenny and listening as the twins babbled about hamantaschen and making a lot of noise; it was difficult to understand much of it, and after a few moments Wanda quietly prompted them to say goodnight. It was must too late to call Westchester, but she still considered it—Purim was just so much _fun_ at the mansion, and she was touched that they had taken a moment out of the festivities to think of her.

The school always put on its own Purim spiel, and it was always exceedingly funny. The gentlest, most awkward male teacher at the school was always cast in the role of the king—originally the honor had gone to Hank, but lately Scott had taken it on—and Mystique was cast as the Queen Vashti, who was so deeply offended at her husband commanding her to appear naked that she slapped him and stormed dramatically offstage. Mystique’s exit, of course, always provoked howls of laughter, and she immediately returned for a bow and a round of applause as her blue, scaled, nude self. Charles usually played the evil Haman, unless a student wanted to take the role instead, and adopted a thoroughly inconsistent “evil” voice. She and her siblings had _begged_ their father to play Mordechai when they were children; he, too, often tried to pass the role onto students, but more often than not he ended up acting the part. He always played it with suitable dignity, refusing to bow to Haman and then urging his people to fight for their lives against him. The children, Jews and goyim alike, also found it comfortingly familiar to watch Charles and Erik bicker. The script allowed for plenty of improvisation, and so Mordechai and Haman’s arguments often devolved into thinly-veiled metaphors for the argument du jour at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.

And Lorna herself was always Esther.

She _loved_ Esther. She always had, since she was a child flipping through the Bible picture books at Hebrew school, bypassing all of the boys and flipping right to the stories about girls. Miriam and Deborah—prophets and leaders of the people—had been Wanda’s favorite, but Lorna liked Esther and Rivka—clever women who had schemed in secret to protect their families. And, given that Esther also shared the Hebrew name Hadassah, it was only natural for Lorna to idolize her. She had seized the role when she was twelve and refused to give it up, even though she had a tendency to forget the words. There was one line, though, that she always remembered, which she had taken from the biblical Mordechai and given to the Esther of the spiel.

It was a dramatic moment. Esther had to choose between revealing to her husband, the king, that she was a Jew, potentially losing her life in the process, and staying silent and allowing the rest of her people to be killed. Lorna always played it up, striding across the stage and wringing her hands before she stopped in the center, straightened the velvet cape she wore, lifted her chin, and uttered the classic line: “Who knows? Perhaps it is for this very reason that I have become queen.”

It was a marvellous story, she thought. Her father had always raised her to appreciate good stories—it was part of the reason he was so good at what he did, because he knew how to frame things the proper way. It was also, of course, a very Jewish sensibility. They were a people of stories. Back when Lorna was too young to learn Hebrew, when the twins visited for Shabbos Wanda would tell her the stories from the Torah portion. And then Pietro would turn them into increasingly elaborate games that afternoon. (Lorna had been shocked to learn, at the age of ten, that King David did _not_ actually have a pet dragon according to the Torah.)

Suddenly Lorna sat up. It earned her a whine from Lenny, but she scratched his head sympathetically and started scanning her bookshelf. After a moment she found the book she was looking for, and tugged a heavy, maroon-bound chumash from the bottom shelf. Normally she was not the kind of person who pulled out a bible to read to herself at ten o’clock on a Thursday night, but she was in the mood for a story. She squinted at the blocky Hebrew letters and began to read in a slow, lilting voice.

“Va-yihi bimay Ashervayus, hu-Ashervayus hamoler M’hodu vay-ad Kush…”

_Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus, who ruled from India to Ethiopia, over a hundred and twenty-seven provinces—in those days when he sat on the throne, which was in Shushan, in the third year of his reign, he made a feast for all his princes and his servants; the power of Persia and Medea, the nobles and princes of the provinces, were all before him. And he showed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honour of his excellent majesty for many days, for a hundred and fourscore days..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Lorna is a nerd who definitely named her dog after Leonard Nimoy)


	7. Pesach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the most Cherik-y chapter. I tried to keep this fic sort of neutral so non-shippers could enjoy it to, but with so much time spent on Lorna and her siblings I wanted to expand the family circle a bit, so to speak.

“Chag Sameach, everybody,” Charles said, raising his voice over the happy chatter of people settling down at the table. “If we could all take our seats—thank you. Now, as some of you know, Erik—or Magneto, if you prefer—usually leads our Passover seder. Unfortunately, Erik has lost his voice and refuses to drink any more tea, so he has passed the responsibility onto me.”

“Are you sure, professor?” Wanda said, surprised. “I could do it if you like.”

Erik waved her away.

“That’s kind of you, Wanda, but no. We didn’t want to spring this on you last minute; technically your father is still going to lead the seder, but I’m going to be acting as his vocal chords tonight.”

“You know he’s not Jewish, right?” Pietro said to Erik. Erik flashed him a sardonic glance and, with a slight wiggle of his fingers, used Pietro’s own spoon to flick him between the eyes. “Ow!”

“Thank you, Pietro, we are aware,” Charles said dryly. He cleared his throat. “Now, if you could all pick up your haggadot and turn to the first page…”

Charles had been nervous about leading the seder, but he found that they settled into an easy rhythm very quickly. It helped that he had been familiar with the material practically from the moment it was produced. Lorna and Wanda had written the haggadah together, several years ago. Lorna had returned from her first year at college—the first time since she was nine years old that she had attended a baseline-majority school—and felt the need for a mutant rights haggadah. It had premiered the following year; the seder attendants had judged it to be wildly successful, and a number of mutant and Jewish publications had covered it.

It had been mostly comprised of adults, though, which had begun to change as the seder went from “ground-breaking” to “business as usual.” Now most of the attendees were either teachers or students. It was also the first year they had young children reciting the four questions. Tommy and Billy did very well, even with Charles doing his very best not to cheat. (He did notice, however, that Billy, who was sitting on his aunt’s lap within range to hear covert whispering, did noticeably better than his brother.)

“Why is this night different from all other nights?”

_Because on all other nights we eat leavened bread and matzah, and tonight only matzah. Because on all other nights we eat all vegetables, and on this night only bitter herbs. Because on all other nights we do not dip our food even once, and on this night we dip twice. Because on all other nights we eat sitting or reclining, and this night we recline._

_Because on this night we sit with our fellow mutants. Because we come together to mourn those we have lost and to think of those who suffer under the yoke of oppression. Because we strengthen our resolve to liberate ourselves and our fellows. Because we celebrate our mutations and the diverse abilities and appearances of our people._

It was a really lovely passage, Charles thought. And it was made better by the fact that it was one of the few pieces that Erik didn’t complain through. Every time Charles deviated from the script—or refused to deviate from the script despite Erik’s request—there was a bit of silent bickering, but Charles was adamant about the fact that the younger children at the seder, who still weren’t entirely sure what “the yoke of oppression” meant, didn’t need to be given a lecture on the complicity of the news media in the proposal, support, and reframing of anti-mutant agendas, and the ethical necessity for mutants to produce their own propaganda to negate such biases. (This, Erik thought, was obviously the explanation for God’s choice of Aaron to assist his brother in speaking to Pharaoh.)

Charles also sometimes felt familiar enough to make a few additions of his own, and he encouraged a long and really very fascinating discussion about how Moses’s family story—essentially being raised by baseline humans—was familiar to many other mutants, and how such an experience led him to use violence only as a last resort, with a great deal of personal pain at the way he had become distant from those whom he considered his family. Erik rolled his eyes a lot during that conversation.

“And, you know, just from reading the haggadah one might be horrified at the final plague as unnecessarily cruel—the murder of all the Egyptian firstborn. _However_ , the tradition teaches us that in fact it was not all the Egyptians who suffered. According to the rabbis, one third of the Egyptians joined the Hebrews when they left to wander in the desert, and received the Torah at Sinai. Another third remained in Egypt, but wished them well, and those are the ones who, we see, give the Israelites gifts and supplies. The final third was the group who were actively hostile to the Israelites, and tried to keep them enslaved and attacked them. Those were the only Egyptians who suffered in the plague. So you see, Jewish tradition teaches us that in the struggle for freedom, it is necessary to know the minds of what we might call our opponents, and not indiscriminately attack all those who—shut _up_ , Erik, it’s a midrash, check the Talmud yourself if you don’t believe me—yes, it _is_!”

Finally the first part of the seder was over and the food began pouring out of the kitchen—the small, private kitchen, nut-free and kosher, reserved for students and teachers with dietary restrictions. Much of it marched out on its own, guided by Erik’s hand, but the room was still full of bustling people fetching the ceramic plates and trying to sneak a macaroon. Lorna wove through them and ducked down to kiss Charles’ cheek.

“Happy Passover, dear,” he said with a smile.

“Chag Sameach to you too, prof. We’ll make a proper Hebrew of you yet.”

“It’s hard to go wrong with a good haggadah,” he said modestly.

“Still, you lead it well.”

Her mind was loose and warm with wine—four prescribed glasses, although Charles had substituted grape juice—and he caught a wave of daughterly affection that would have made him blush if sixty years of telepathy had not made him more or less immune to embarrassment.

He and Erik had never sat down and explained their relationship to Erik’s children. They had hardly sat down to explain their relationship to themselves, and yet it had never been much of a problem. They were partners, no more and no less. Together they sought out mutants, ran the school, shaped public discourse, fought for their people. And they also… slept together, cared for each other, raised the children. He _hoped_ he had helped raise the children. They truly were incredible people, and it was unexpectedly touching to hear Lorna compliment him for leading a seder—because really, they had been his introduction to Judaism. Sure, he had learned some of the basics from Erik, but Erik had not been traditionally observant until he had begun to pass on his faith to his children. They were the reason that he began lighting candles on Friday nights, and had finally asked Charles if they could completely kasher the small kitchen. Charles had initially read the Tanakh and the Talmud with the sole aim of helping Lorna edit her bat mitzvah essay.

It was funny—Erik had wanted his children to be raised in the faith so that they could feel connected to their heritage, and he had become more observant in order to become closer to them. And, in a way, Charles felt as though he had done the same. He looked around the room of what had, at one time, been a cold, empty house. He saw his students, and his students-turned-teachers, his son, his daughters, his grandsons, his lover. It brought the slightest threat of tears to the back of his throat.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. He cleared his throat and added guiltily, “Although I borrowed most of the words from your father, of course.”

Lorna raised her eyebrows with a smirk.

“Sure, prof.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pesach: Passover. A week-long holiday that commemorates the exodus from Egypt. Seders are held on the first and second nights, and those who attend read from a haggadah that tells the story of the exodus. Modern haggadot often connect the story to modern social justice issues like women’s rights, human trafficking, classism, etc.


	8. Shavuot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shavuot: A holiday to celebrate the giving of the Torah. To celebrate, people often decorate their homes and synagogues with flowers and greenery, and eat dairy-based foods like cheesecake or blintzes. The Book of Ruth, about a woman who converted to Judaism, is read, and some synagogues have also begun having “confirmation” ceremonies, where Jewish teenagers (usually about 16-18 years old) reaffirm their commitment to the Jewish faith after their bar/bat mitzvah.

“Auntie, what does cheesecake taste like?” Tommy asked, leaning over the counter.

“Good,” Lorna answer simply, and Tommy wrinkled his nose.

“Like grilled cheese?”

“Not quite, sweetheart. It’s made with a different kind of cheese, see?”

She pointed at the mountain of cream cheese wrappers on the counter, and Tommy shrugged and sat down with a plop on the leather stool. At his day school they had made little bouquets of tissue paper flowers—he had presented one to her, along with Wanda, Storm, and Jean—and now he and Billy were in the process of making more and drawing other plants, enough to deck the entire mansion. Billy had run off to find more green crayons.

And Lorna was making cheesecake. She had already made a plain New York cheesecake with strawberries, which was chilling in the fridge. It was past sunset on Friday, so technically she should have stopped there—but she was thinking. Cheesecake was just about the only thing she could bake, and baking and thinking went well together, so she had raided the other kitchen for more cream cheese and was now making a caramel cheesecake as well.

“I found crayons!” Billy declared, bursting back into the room while pulling his grandfather behind. “And Zaide!”

“Are you going to make tissue paper flowers?” Lorna asked, unable to keep the amusement out of her voice, as her father sat down.

“I am here to supervise,” he said, very seriously.

“Ah.”

For a few moments there was silence in the kitchen as the kids worked on their art and Lorna worked on her cheesecake. She absent-mindedly beat in the eggs and various other batter ingredients and, when that was done, went over to the stovetop and began making caramel sauce. Caramel was tricky; it required her full attention.

“Something on your mind?” Erik asked after a moment, in Russian. All of his children were multilingual; he (and the twins’ mother) had insisted that just because they would be raised American did not mean they had to have the foreign language capabilities of Americans. Pietro was the best of them, naturally, but Lorna was very fond of Russian, as well as Yiddish and Spanish.

“Nothing important,” she said with a shrug, stirring her caramel.

There was a very potent silence, and she shrugged again.

“I got a job offer. From the Stark Industries New York branch.”

“Good,” Erik said shortly, in a voice she was very familiar with. It was the ‘I never actually remember to tell them, but obviously my children are smarter and more accomplished than anyone else’s children in the world, and it’s about damn time someone else admitted it’ voice. (Her and her siblings’ relationships with their father had improved significantly once they were able to recognize it.)

“Perhaps.”

“You’re qualified, it’s work you’re interested in, and you like New York. What’s the perhaps?”

Lorna turned around and braced her hands against the stove behind her.

“I _left_ New York,” she reminded him quietly.

Erik’s eyebrows lifted for half a second in an eloquent expression. Lorna had decided, after a few ill-advised attempts at breaking into the mutant political scene, that she needed some time away from the mansion, and the cameras, and the controversies, and—to be frank—her family. In principle, it was something her father approved of, but she knew that in practice it had stung a little. Erik lifted his eyebrows and one shoulder again, in the manner of Jewish parents since time immemorial.

“Besides, the offer wasn’t made until after I mentioned to a certain influential someone that I was not entirely happy with my current firm, and I’m not sure if I want to advance my career in that way.”

She turned around and stirred the caramel sauce again; it was starting to seize, just a little bit, so she added more butter and cream and lifted it off the burner while she stirred.

“Tony Stark doesn’t take in everyone who walks off the street,” Erik pointed out. “Charles’s interference wouldn’t change that.”

“Even so.”

She poured the caramel over the cheesecake and swirled it within the batter, and put the whole thing in the oven. As she sat down, Tommy shoved tissue paper in her direction.

“Auntie, here, you can have all the green ones,” he offered proudly, and Lorna laughed.

“Thank you, darling.”

“I’m making a red one for Mama,” Billy declared.

“It’s beautiful.”

“Can I have a red one as well?”

“Next one, Zaide.”

“Would you really not want to come back?” Erik asked abruptly, in German this time.

“I don’t know,” Lorna said in a slow, careful voice—partly because she didn’t know the answer and partly because it had been a while since she spoke German. She folded the green layers of paper like an accordion. “It seems ridiculous. I fly over so often, sometimes it feels like I’m here more than I’m in California, but I still like having… I don’t know.”

“It’s your decision,” her father said, and then started talking to Billy and Tommy about dayschool.

Lorna continued to fold her flower while considering her options. She had been having this debate with herself on the plane ride over, and had the feeling that she was inching closer and closer to a decision. The only thing that was really holding her back was that she was not entirely thrilled about working for a weapons manufacturer. But although that was the most prominent aspect of the company to outsiders, among industry professionals Stark did have a brilliant reputation for innovation unrelated to weapons, and at her last meeting with Stark he had laid out a detailed guideline for the kinds of projects she was being asked to work on. Lorna would be lying if she said they hadn’t sounded fascinating. Her contract would also include blanket permission to use her powers in the design and construction phases of any project she participated in, which was not the kind of opportunity someone could turn down out of hand. At the same time, the people she had met had been very tactful at not bringing up Charles or Erik’s names—a few times she had gotten the sense that Stark was bursting with curiosity, but his assistant had very subtly laid a hand on his forearm and he had backed down.

Did it matter so much, still? she wondered, sneaking a glance at her father. Being Magneto’s daughter had always been—if not a _problem_ , that at least an overwhelming factor in her private and public lives. It was impossible to express an opinion on mutant politics without spawning five or more op-eds comparing it to her father’s opinion. Or, even worse, people would use her status as an alumnus of Xavier’s School to fuel the fire of the Magneto v. Professor X debate. It was equally impossible to find a career in mechanical/metallurgical engineering without running smack-dab into the middle of the controversy about mutant workers’ rights.

In the years since then, Lorna had been enjoying independence. She had a decent foothold in the smaller, local California mutant scene. She had earned a good reputation in her field, powers or not. Maybe she had changed enough. Maybe she had become _herself_ enough to return home.

“Here, Tommy,” she said. She fluffed out the petals of the flower one last time, and slipped the pipe cleaner under the neck of his shirt in lieu of a buttonhole. “You can have this one.”

“Auntie, look, we’ve made like a billion flowers,” Tommy said, gesturing grandly at the countertop. “Do you think we should bring some to shul tomorrow? Or should we leave them here?”

“I think Rabbi Jacobs would love it if you brought one or two. Then maybe the rest can go in the living room, and if there are some left over then the two of you can bring some home with Mama.”

“That’s a good idea,” Tommy approved.

“You know what’s so great about Shavuot?” Lorna said slowly as she watched her nephews scribble with the crayons—they were all out of tissue paper. “It’s all about celebrating choices. Making choices is hard sometimes, but in the end everything works out. We celebrate choosing the Torah, and we celebrate Ruth becoming Jewish, and we do it all by being with our family and picking flowers and eating cheesecake. It’s a very special holiday.”

“Amen,” her father replied, studiously studying the table so that Lorna wouldn’t see the smile spreading across his face.

“And for that,” she declared. “I think we deserve a little cheesecake right now.”

“The oven hasn’t dinged yet,” Billy pointed out.

“Luckily, you have the greatest aunt in the world,” Lorna said as she turned to take the strawberry cheesecake out of the fridge. “Don’t tell your mother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We started off with Lorna, Erik, and the kids, and it felt right to end the same way. I feel like the actual holiday of Shavuot may have gotten a bit overshadowed by family stuff instead, but oh well.
> 
> I just wanted to say I really appreciate the comments I've gotten so far. I'm glad this story resonated with people. Chanukah Sameach!


End file.
